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A month ago I posted about how I was finally getting a new computer after 6 years with an old Dell P4 1.7GHz machine. I know it’s safe to say that all of the little kinks are out of the system after using it for about three weeks now.

When I first stated to build the PC it was really hot in the room so I had to occasionally get up and run my hands and arms under cold water for fear of accidentally sweating onto the motherboard. Now I’ve never built a PC before, but I assume that it’s bad to get any type of liquid on the motherboard so I wanted to play it safe :D. So after several trips back and forth to the sink and my old computer where I was posting questions and various PC building forums I finally got the heatsync onto the processor. Putting the heatsync onto the processor was especially nerve wracking because at the time I didn’t know you had to push down on the screws to mount it in place. So the whole I was trying to mount the heatsync I was worried that I’d hear a snap and have to wait two weeks for a new processor to replace my broken one, but fortunately my fears were unwarranted. I later found out that obviously you have to press down really hard while you’re mounting the heatsync on the processor because they both need to be in constant contact or the processor would get damaged from the extreme heat.

After putting on the heatsync, the rest of the stuff was pretty easy, although I still continuously ran into little problems that I had to solve with the help of some random forum members. Needless to say, I learned a ton of stuff about building computers - most of which came from my choice of PC parts. The next time I build a PC I’ll know a lot more about what to watch out for (like power connectors from the power supply matching up with the motherboard). Now that it’s over and the computer has been running smoothly for a while now without any issues there is a great sense of accomplishment. I also loved the fact that after running into all the little problems while building it the PC started up without issue on the first try

If you want to build your own PC and have never done it before I’d highly recommend having a buddy with you that has built one before. It’s a lot easier to build a PC when you can ask a person a question that can physically see what you’re working on than posting questions on forums. Either way, I’ll gladly do it again as you can save a lot of money by building your own PC than if you buy it from Dell or some other company.

Here are the specs again in case you didn’t see the first post I made about the new PC:

Intel Q6600 - Quad Core 2.4 Ghz Processor
EVGA LGA 775 Nvidia nForce 680i SLI Mobo
EVGA GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB
Antec Performance One P180B Case
FSP Blue Storm II 500 ATX 2.2V 500W Power Supply
G.Skill 2GB (2×1 GB sticks) DDR2 800
Lite On 20X DVD Burner
500 GB SeaGate SATA HD
Zalman 9700 (Aftermarket Heat Sync)

Total came out to about $1200 (before $100 in mail-in rebates).

Have you ever built a PC before? I’d like to hear some of your stories so please comment on this post.

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We’re a little past the three month mark since the installation of vBSEO on HaloBoards.com, so I’m going to show the results from Google Analytics as well as our current SERPS results. I’ve decided that in order to keep the updates on track I’ll be just doing one post per month for each case study. This will allow me to focus the extra time on writing other content for the blog ;). Ok, now that we’ve settled that here are the numbers for Week 12 (a little late) for vBSEO’s affect on search engine indexing and increasing web traffic for HaloBoards.com. Here are the numbers for Week 12:

site:haloboards.com (Google) up 2,600 to 26,700

site:haloboards.com (Yahoo) down 121 to 12,729

site:haloboards.com (MSN) down 65 to 142

Well the numbers are pretty much leveling off now, but as I’ve said all along the most important thing to me is vBSEO’s affect on sending more traffic to my forum and here are some graphs from Google Analytics:

April 10th to May 10th (1 month before vBSEO installation)

May 11th to June 11th (1 month after vBSEO installation)

June 12th to July 12th (2 months after vBSEO installation)

July 13th to August 13th (3 months after vBSEO installation)

The traffic numbers for last month were pretty low, but I’m not that concerned about it as it consisted of mid to late July and into early August (two terrible times for traffic especially on my forums). I’m really looking to see how vBSEO does as we get back into the peak times for traffic. I’m still satisfied with the results and look forward to showing more numbers on next month’s vBSEO update for my vBulletin forum HaloBoards.com.

Are you using vBSEO yet?

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This a continuation of my server transfer post from a long over due shared hosting account to my new dedicated hosting server at softlayer. Read part one on my move to the new server here.

I have successfully finished the server migration for most of my vBulletin forums:

GamingVidz.com
HaloBoards.com
XboxLiveArcade.com
WorldofWarcraftBoard.com

I plan to transfer a few more of my sites (and this blog) later on this week. Overall the server migration was relatively smooth. The transfer was easy because my old recommended shared host Site5.com was using a modified version of cPanel (Pretty much just a different look) and my new dedicated server also uses cPanel, so the migration was easy. I simply had to email Site5 about generating a full backup for each site (They had that feature disabled so I had to request each backup to be genereated for me) and then I’d contact my new server management company Platinum Server Management with ftp information to my old shared hosting account. Platinum Server Management was then able to restore each site for me on my dedicated server one by one so that I didn’t have to bother with actually doing it. I then just changed the DNS information at my softlayer control panel and with my registrar GoDaddy. The DNS migration often happened immediately after changing my information and was much faster than I thought it might take. GoDaddy states that it may take 24 - 48 hours for the DNS migration to complete but it actually happened almost instantly for a few of the site transfers. The thing that made the server migration much easier was not only by having my server management company PSM do the actual migration, but the fact that both my old host and my new host were using the same admin control panel software - cPanel. I highly recommend that if you find yourself in the situation of outgrowing your old server and must change over to a new server that you use the same control panel software. It makes things much easier to transfer that way.

If you are nervous about doing the server transfer yourself for fear of losing data or don’t know how to administer a server, find a good server management company like Platinum Server Management and have them do it for you. I began my search for a server management company while I was in the process of picking out my new server. When I was speaking with the Soft Layer salesperson she had recommended that I check out PSM because many Soft Layer customers had great things to say about them. I checked out the company and found that PSM only manages servers with cPanel and that just so happens to be my control panel software I’ve worked with for a few years. Besides, if they only work with one conrol panel software (cPanel in this case) then they must know it really well AND PSM was only $29 a month! When I was looking around at some other server migration companies she had recommended I found many prices in the $60 to $100 a month range, so to find a service that I really needed for only $29 a month was a steal. All of these factors helped to make my decision but I must admit the price and the 30 day money back guarantee helped seal the deal. I highly recommend Platinum Server Management if you use cPanel and want help administering the server, keeping it secure, performing server migrations and more.

I’ll keep you posted on how they work out too since I know how hard it is to make a decision on moving to a new hosting company and select a server management company. I’m glad that the largest sites have been transferred without issue and have been very pleased with the new server’s response times. The server loads in vBulletin’s control panel have been really low for my forums and that helps to make for speedy load times. I’m glad it’s nearly done though

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I’ve found several fellow webmasters that although they buy domains from GoDaddy, they have never used a domain promo code! Say what you will about GoDaddy, I personally chose them early on because of how large and well known the company was. I was previously burned by a “buy one year of hosting and get a free domain” deal several years ago when I first got into websites but I’ll save that for another day. Anyway, I have most of my domains at GoDaddy and always use the following promo code before checking out:

OYH3

It drops $2 off a .com renewal or new domain purchase and I’ve been using it for nearly a year on every .com domain I buy. I think the final total for the domain comes out to $7.20 after ICANN fee.

I actually got into using the GoDaddy promo codes by reading this thread on NamePros

There are also other domain renewal codes found in that thread for different TLD’s and it’s constantly updated too.

Have you used promo codes at GoDaddy?

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*Side note, I meant to post this earlier on August 3rd, but new computer woes, server transfers and vacation threw me off so here it is now.*

I can’t even believe it’s been four months since I installed vBSEO on GamingVidz.com and started this series of posts on vBSEO’s affects on forum search engine indexing and sending traffic from search engines. Before we get the the Google analytics graphs let’s cover the SERPS since last update:

site:gamingvidz.com (Google) up 6,000 to 209,000

site:gamingvidz.com (Yahoo) down 2,234 to 24,877

site:gamingvidz.com (MSN) down 39 to 102

Overall, I think the first few month’s explosive growth has leveled off. I’m going to post over in vBSEO’s forums to see if this is to be expected or not. Either way, as I’ve said before the real pupose of this case study is to see how much search engine traffic is sent to GamingVidz.com with vBSEO’s help. Again, as you can see as a whole direct traffic has gone down; however, this always occurs on GamingVidz.com as the summer months bring less time inside watching videos and more time outside, on vacation etc. for my members. With that in mind, here are the numbers from earliest to latest thus far (pay attention to the search engine traffic chunk):

April 2nd to April 9th (Pre vBSEO installation - only one week of data)

April 10th to May 7th (1 month after vBSEO installation)

May 8th to June 4th (2 months after vBSEO installation)

June 5th to July 2nd (3 months after vBSEO installation)

July 3rd to August 3rd (4 months after vBSEO installation)

Sixteen weeks ago GamingVidz started with only 34,300 results and in four months vBSEO increased search engine results for a site:gamingvidz.com search of 209,000 results. It took GamingVidz nearly two years to reach 34,300 results and in four months vBSEO has increased search engine results by about 6x what we started with. As the graphs also show there has a substantial increase in organic search engine traffic as well! I know I’ve said it before, but I couldn’t be more pleased with my vBSEO license purchases and I recommend purchasing one for your vBulletin forums as well.

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I’m finally back from vacation. Most of you probably didn’t even know I was gone, and that’s because I meant to write some posts while I was on vacation. Unfortunately, I didn’t end up having internet access where I was staying. Doh! In any case I was incredibly busy up until the time I left last week so I’ll soon post several updates on the progress of my new computer and the server transfer. Next time I’ll make time to write posts and use Wordpress’ time stamp feature to prevent this from happening again.

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